33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French)

The 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French) was a Waffen-SS division of Nazi Germany that was active from September 1944 to 8 May 1945. The division was formed out of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism and the Sturmbrigade, both of which were disbanded. French collaborators fleeing the Allied advance in the West joined the Charlemagne Division, as did Frenchmen from the Kriegsmarine, the National Socialist Motor Corps, Organisation Todt, and the Milice security police. The division grew to have between 7,340 and 11,000 soldiers at its peak in 1944, and it was sent to fight the Soviet Red Army in Poland in February 1945. On 25 February, the 1st Belorussian Front attacked the division at Hammerstein (Czarne) in Pomerania, splitting the division into three pockets; one was evacuated by the Kriegsmarine to Denmark and then to Neustrelitz, the second was destroyed by Soviet artillery, and the third lost all of its men (either dead or captured) in an attempt to fight its way westward. By early April 1945, the division had just 700 men left, and they fought in the Battle of Berlin. At the end of the war on 8 May 1945, the division had just 60 remaining men, who surrendered to the USSR.